Feedback talk:User/Ruine Eternelle/Repeatable PvP Battle in Ascalon Pre-Searing

Additional ideas from Dmitri[edit]

An excerpt from my privately-submitted September 2008 pre-Searing Ascalon enhancement blueprint, which I shed the light on once-more in another section today and am currently moving here:

Hello, James. Good day, Isaiah. As I promised you the last week, this time I'm going to introduce a small proposal for you on how to allow Guild Wars players to experience further delight in pre-Searing Ascalon.

<skipping a lot of text related to the already-improved LDoA acquisition>

So, what's the easiest thing which could be implemented in order to make people enjoy the process of leveling up from level 16 to 20 in pre-Searing that presumes them actually playing, instead of just being afk?

It's a 4 vs 4 Ascalon Academy Arena! A basic PvP area which would allow the players to compete against each other and receive experience points from PvP frags, rather than leveling up the Charr.

Here are the key features I deemed to be worth highlighting, while elaborating on this concept:

- The Ascalon Academy Arena should have a level requirement of 5+ in order to participate in its matches. This will prevent the new players with low level characters from being killed in the competition by more advanced characters.

- This PvP map should automatically add level 20 henchmen with strong offensive skills in case of absence of real players wanting to participate, making it a 1 vs 1 battle with up to 3 henchmen for each side.

- A skill trainer NPC must be added into Ascalon City (already done), allowing the players to learn up to about 20 new and rather basic skills for each of 6 professions. Why this number of skills? Because it corresponds with the existing pre-Searing's leveling design, allowing to introduce skill sets resembling the ones which are normally offered to players for learning on the road to Lion's Arch, in other words, those sufficiently-balanced and not overpowered for this type of play, which, in my opinion, strongly resembles the classical ArenaNet's Sealed Deck Play (alternatively, it could be fulfilled exactly like in Codex Arena, by granting a temporary skills pool, as Ruine previously noticed).

I've arranged these batches of skills for each profession, of those I've found suitable enough for such improvement. Basically, they are pre-Lion's Arch skills, excluding strong ones, like Infuse Health or Restore Life.

Here are some of the positive effects the addition of such PvP Arena can provide:

- It will attract more players to buy Game of the Year Upgrade, increasing their interest in weapons it grants.
- It will eliminate the necessity to spend dozens of days and nights being AFK and leveling up the Charr, which is a really boring task. (A bit outdated, but that problem of slow leveling still applies to certain activities even with daily quests added, such as aiming for Legendary Survivor of Ascalon, for example).

Additional reasons/thoughts of why and how it could be implemented:
- There's already a map available for this PvP Arena, the one that players' characters enter before leaving pre-Searing, so it isn't really hard to feature this map in pre-Searing competitive play.
- An NPC allowing the players to teleport into the outpost of this battle should be placed in Ascalon City, while the new zone itself should be accessible likewise from the world map. As far as I recall, there's a certain location such as Ascalon Academy Outpost, which suits it perfectly and has been utilized for it before, shortly after the launch of Guild Wars: Prophecies, when there have been hundreds of players leaving pre-Searing at the same time.
- The timer for the matches should be equivalent to 6 minutes. There definitely must be one, to prevent potential griefing such as constant running.

On the general scope, it appears to me that the suggested skill sets are about 90% balanced and will not cause any significant troubles for players across all six professions, accompanied by their secondary class choices. The full list is as follows:

Halbrik [Skills]:

Warrior: Galrath Slash, Savage Slash, Seeking Blade, Dismember, Axe Twist, Swift Chop, Counter Blow, Mighty Blow, Crushing Blow, Irresistible Blow, Crude Swing, "Fear Me!", "Watch Yourself!" (PvP), Protector's Strike, Griffon's Sweep, "I Will Survive!", "I Will Avenge You!", Rush (Sprint*), Shield Bash, Flurry.